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November 16th, 2018
This December we are selling winter greeting cards featuring student artwork – and we need your help. We're looking for student artists to capture the beauty of the winter season and help support our Waterloo Education Foundation (WEFI).
Students, proud parents, and educators are asked to submit original student artwork (JK-12) via Twitter and Instagram using the hashtag #Art4WEFI. All submissions must be received by the end of day November 23, 2018.
We will notify the six finalists via direct message on our Twitter and Instagram channels that we have selected their artwork. Student artists will also have the opportunity to attend a launch event at our Education Centre and speak about their artwork.
The Waterloo Education Foundation is a registered charity that supports programs and students in Waterloo Region District School Board. Donations help support nutrition programs, upgrading technology equipment and providing opportunities for students to attend field trips. All proceeds from the sale of our greeting cards will go to WEFI.
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Forest River RV Rockwood Signature Ultra Lite 8288SB Fifth Wheel For Sale
Forest River Rockwood Signature Ultra Lite fifth wheel 8288SB highlights:
- Exterior Storage
- Triple Slides
- King Bed
- Rear Hide-A-Bed Sofa
- Residential Refrigerator
- Exterior Cooktop
You'll be camping in style each time you take this fifth wheel out to the campground! The dual opposing slides in the main living area create an open floorplan, and the kitchen island here will provide more counter space to prep meals. You will love the theater seat directly across from the entertainment center and fireplace, and additional seating can be found on the hide-a-bed sofa or around the king U-shaped dinette. The full bath includes a shower with a seat, a skylight, plus a Maxxair ventilation fan to keep everything fresh. The front private bedroom may feel more like a resort with its king bed slide out, large wardrobe and shirt closet, plus a dresser to keep your clothes tidy. And did we mention this fifth wheel has two power awnings for maximum protection against the elements, and tons of exterior storage for all your gear!
Each Rockwood Signature Ultra Lite fifth wheel and travel trailer by Forest River is constructed with a radiant foil insulated underbelly, laminated fiberglass sidewalls, and tinted frameless windows for a more sleek look. Enjoy hassle-free towing thanks to the torsion axle Rubber-Ryde suspension system, and you'll also appreciate the tire pressure monitoring system with a monitor and the rear observation camera prep. Each model includes LED TV's, a multi zone stereo with DVD/CD/AM/FM and Bluetooth, plus outside speakers for all your entertainment needs. You'll find that the carpetless main bedroom floor will be so easy to clean, and the under-bed storage will allow you to easily store your luggage once you've unpacked. These fifth wheels and travel trailers also include designer kitchen backsplash, beautiful Newport Ash or Autumn wood cabinetry, and a fireplace on most models.
We have 1 8288SB availableView InventorySpecifications
Sleeps 6 Slides 3 Length 37 ft Ext Width 8 ft Ext Height 13 ft 2 in Interior Color Chocolate, Stone Exterior Color Standard, Champagne. Optional, White Hitch Weight 1699 lbs Dry Weight 10686 lbs Cargo Capacity 1813 lbs Fresh Water Capacity 54 gals Grey Water Capacity 80 gals Black Water Capacity 50 gals Tire Size 16" Furnace BTU 35000 btu Available Beds King Refrigerator Type Residential Cooktop Burners 3 Number of Awnings 2 LP Tank Capacity 30 lbs Water Heater Capacity 6 gal Water Heater Type Quick Recovery Gas/Electric AC BTU 13500 btu TV Info LR LED TV Awning Info 10' and 11' Power w/Rain Dump and LED Lights Axle Count 2 Washer/Dryer Available Yes Number of LP Tanks 2 Shower Type Shower w/Seat Electrical Service 50 amp Similar Fifth Wheel Floorplans
Fifth Wheel
- 58 Photos
- 1 Video
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- Stock #: RO902981
- Length: 37ft
- Location: Parris RV - Payson
- Sleeps: 6
- Savings: $34,060
From: $533 /mo.Get Lowest Internet Price View Details »
Parris RV is not responsible for any misprints, typos, or errors found in our website pages. Any price listed excludes sales tax, registration tags, and delivery fees. Manufacturer pictures, specifications, and features may be used in place of actual units on our lot. Please contact us @801-268-1110 for availability as our inventory changes rapidly. All calculated payments are an estimate only and do not constitute a commitment that financing or a specific interest rate or term is available.
Manufacturer and/or stock photographs may be used and may not be representative of the particular unit being viewed. Where an image has a stock image indicator, please confirm specific unit details with your dealer representative.

subset: commoncrawl


text: This is a not-for-profit fan site, created for information and entertainment only. No copyright infringement is intended. This website live since November 2006. Pages most recently updated on Sunday January 04, 2009. Kindly sponsored by those lovely people at CM Enterprises for purely altruistic and selfless reasons. No, really. They're not looking for the kind of exposure that a return gig on national television would give them, oh no. Not at all. Or sucking up. How dare you even suggest such a thing?! This website is part of the Impossible Things network. |


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Analysis: Cyprus rescue raises new questions about euro's long-term survival
The messy deal to bail out Cyprus has averted the latest threat to the break-up of the euro but at the cost of raising new questions about the single currency's long-term viability.
Savers in other euro zone banks appear so far to be taking the freezing of balances over 100,000 euros in Cyprus's two biggest lenders in their stride. Perhaps they judge that events in a tiny, far-away island with outsize banks and a reliance on deposits from Russian oligarchs hold little relevance for them.
Yields on Italian and Spanish bonds held broadly on Monday, reflecting a belief that the European Central Bank's promise to buy struggling euro members' bonds if need be - a program known as Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) - will prevent a spillover from Cyprus.
"This certainly plays into the hands of northern European creditor countries, who have long taken the view that fears of contagion, in particular post-OMT, are wildly exaggerated," said Nicholas Spiro of Spiro Sovereign Strategy in London.
"For the time being there is no contagion: the markets, rightly or wrongly, still believe in the credibility and effectiveness of this bond-buying scheme."
Although big outflows from Italian or Spanish banks were unlikely, Spiro said the troika of the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the ECB had set a dangerous precedent by initially agreeing to tax Cypriot deposits below the European Union's 100,000 euro guarantee threshold.
European central bankers in private, and German banks in public, expressed confidence that the repercussions of Cyprus's bailout would be contained.
"The banking sector in the country was too large and did not have a sustainable business model. Cyprus should thus be regarded as a one-off case, and is therefore not comparable with other European countries," said Andreas Schmitz, president of the BdB association of German lenders.
But Lena Komileva, who runs the consultancy G+ Economics in London, said the terms of Monday's early-morning agreement in Brussels sent an unfortunate signal: a euro in a bank in Cyprus is not equal to a euro elsewhere in the euro zone.
"This is... a systemically important deal for the future of the euro zone banking union, or rather the lack of it, which carries implications for Spain in 2014," Komileva said.
The bailout is also evidence of an increasingly hard line being taken with bond holders in failed euro zone banks.
Weeks after the Irish government agreed to repay guaranteed debt in Anglo Irish Bank when it was liquidated, senior bondholders in Popular Bank of Cyprus, also known as Laiki, will be wiped out, while those in Bank of Cyprus will have to make a contribution, officials said.
How big depositors and bond investors in other vulnerable euro zone banks would react post-Cyprus in the event of a new shock thus becomes the latest ���known unknown' in the four-year-old euro zone debt drama.
The crisis in Greece fanned fears of contagion to the likes of Italy and Spain, touching off a deposit flight to safe-haven banks in Germany and other hard-money northern European states.
The result has been a fragmentation of the money and banking markets across the euro zone that the Cyprus bailout can only prolong and possibly intensify.
For example, despite the soothing effect of the ECB's bond-buying pledge, the interest rate in January on new one-year business loans under 1 million euros was 2.8 percent in Germany but 6.7 percent in Portugal.
The ECB's declared priority is to repair the monetary policy transmission mechanism so that its easy-credit stance is diffused to all 17 members of the euro, not just a few.
The policy has been working insofar as cash imbalances between the north and the south of the single currency zone have gradually fallen since ECB President Mario Draghi promised last summer to do whatever it takes to save the euro - a pledge that spawned the OMT program.
The danger now is that this process will stall because of the spillover from Cyprus, keeping bank lending interest rates high and thus deepening the recession in southern Europe.
Speaking in Lisbon last week before the Cyprus deal was struck, Portuguese economists and brokers expressed dismay that euro zone policymakers were gambling with depositor confidence - even if Cyprus's circumstances were special.
"The European Union should be aware of the risks that peripheral countries are facing. Those responsible for decisions like this one on Cyprus should think deeply about the probable consequences," said Paula Carvalho, chief economist at BPI bank.
Joao de Deus, a senior sales trader with brokers Dif in Lisbon, said there was no guarantee that the crisis in Cyprus would be the last flare-up.
For some observers, the Cypriot solution feeds the perception across the periphery that the German-led ���Northern Alliance' is determined to keep pressing for discipline and austerity in southern Europe, even at the risk of perpetuating a vicious cycle of recession, missed fiscal targets and more growth-sapping budget cuts.
The real contagion risk, therefore, is that the meltdown in Cyprus, which is heading for a deep economic slump because of the destruction of its offshore banking industry, will fan a revolt against the hair-shirt policies demanded by the troika as the price of providing a safety net for euro zone strugglers.
With the exception of Greece, protests in southern Europe against high unemployment and pension cuts have so far been peaceful. But resentment at what many see as a lack of solidarity from Germany is growing.
As such, Alastair Winter, chief economist at Daniel Stewart, an investment bank in London, said Cyprus might eventually come to be seen as the second big step in the break-up of the euro, the culmination of five decades of ever-closer integration meant to banish the specter of another war on European soil.
The first step, he argued, was the rejection by a majority of Italian voters in last month's general election of the orthodox prescription of austerity.
"They had duly noted that the peoples of Europe, even if they no longer want to kill each other, are unwilling to help each other out in times of distress," Winter told clients.
(Additional reporting by Daniel Alvarenga in Lisbon; editing by Janet McBride)


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Press Release
Idaho Businessman Convicted Of Income Tax Evasion
For Immediate Release
U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Idaho
WASHINGTON – U.S. Attorney Wendy J. Olson, Assistant Attorney General for the Tax Division Kathryn Keneally, and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced today that a Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, jury convicted Michael George Fitzpatrick, 51, of Hope, Idaho, of two counts of income tax evasion after a four-day trial before U.S. District Judge Larry A. Burns. In September 2012, Fitzpatrick was tried on four tax fraud counts. That jury rendered guilty verdicts on two counts of failure-to-file 2004 corporate income tax returns but was unable to reach verdicts on the tax evasion counts. The verdict today was the result of a second trial on those two charges. Fitzpatrick was remanded into custody immediately.
According to the indictment and evidence introduced at both trials, Fitzpatrick operated a business selling products which purported to help individuals eliminate credit card debt. During 2003 and 2004 the business's gross sales exceeded $9 million, operating under the names Dynamic Solutions, Inc. (DSI) and NAES. The evidence proved Fitzpatrick last filed an individual income tax return in 1996. At trial the government proved the corporations failed to report $3.7 million and Fitzpatrick himself failed to report over $500,000 in income, resulting in a total tax loss of almost $1.4 million.
The evidence at trial established that Fitzpatrick sent over $5 million offshore to WWIN, a "warehouse" bank located in the Dominican Republic. Fitzpatrick accessed this money through the use of a debit card and through wire transfers. During a two-year period, Fitzpatrick used his offshore funds to purchase his personal residence and two four-unit apartment buildings in northern Idaho, with a combined cost of over $700,000. Fitzpatrick also wired $114,980 from his offshore bank accounts to the Bellagio Casino during nine trips to Las Vegas, Nevada.
Sentencing is scheduled for May 13, 2013. The maximum penalty Fitzpatrick faces on each count of tax evasion is five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The two convictions for failure to file corporate income tax returns each carry a maximum penalty of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine.
"Paying income tax is a solemn obligation of citizenship," said Olson. "Those who hide income and evade taxes by sending money off-shore undermine our democracy. This verdict sends a strong message that those who seek to avoid their tax responsibilities will be punished to the fullest extent of the law."
"This verdict should send a clear message, it's imperative for all Americans to pay their share of taxes and those who commit income tax evasion will be brought to justice," said Stephen Boyd, IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agent in Charge for the State of Idaho.
The case was investigated by special agents from the Boise, Idaho, office of IRS Criminal Investigation and prosecuted by Tax Division Trial Attorneys Lori A. Hendrickson, Christopher P. O'Donnell, and Erin S. Mellen, with valuable support from the United States Attorney's Offices in Boise and Coeur d'Alene.
Today's announcement is part of efforts underway by President Obama's Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force (FFETF) which was created in November 2009 to wage an aggressive, coordinated and proactive effort to investigate and prosecute financial crimes. With more than 20 federal agencies, 94 U.S. attorneys' offices and state and local partners, it's the broadest coalition of law enforcement, investigatory and regulatory agencies ever assembled to combat fraud. Since its formation, the task force has made great strides in facilitating increased investigation and prosecution of financial crimes; enhancing coordination and cooperation among federal, state and local authorities; addressing discrimination in the lending and financial markets and conducting outreach to the public, victims, financial institutions and other organizations. Over the past three fiscal years, the Justice Department has filed more than 10,000 financial fraud cases against nearly 15,000 defendants including more than 2,700 mortgage fraud defendants. For more information on the task force, visit www.stopfraud.gov.
Updated December 15, 2014


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Cell Phones
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$399.99The W810i follows a long tradition of beautifully designed and crafted phones from Sony Ericsson. The same candy-bar style that graced the W800 is here. Learn More -
$199.99Under the hood, the 8525 features 128MB of embedded memory and 64MB RAM, running on a 400 MHz Samsung processor. Up front, the 240 x 320 LCD touch-screen supports over 65,000 colors, while the rear of the device houses a 2.0 megapixel camera. Learn More -
Samsung MM-A900M Ace
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HTC Touch Diamond
$750.00Re-defining the perception of advanced mobile phones… the HTC Touch Diamond™ signals a giant leap forward in combining hi-tech prowess with intuitive usability and exhilarating design. Learn More


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The lawyer in me had two recurring questions while reading all 668 pages of Taylor Branch's new book, The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History With the President.
How were the many interviews that gave rise to this tome able to be kept secret from all but a few Clinton confidants, and were the tapes of those interviews made known to the many investigators who looked into the Clinton presidency? The first of those questions is a matter of personal fascination over the ability to keep secrets in a fishbowl environment. The second raises a more serious legal question.
Having promulgated more than my fair share of subpoenas while in private practice, I find it hard to believe that no inquiry from an outside lawyer to President Clinton triggered a requirement to reveal the tapes.
Recall that President Clinton didn't have an exemplary record for veracity when responding to legal discovery. His impeachment, suspension from the Arkansas bar and resignation from bar of the U.S. Supreme Court each arose from false testimony he offered in the Paula Jones case. And now comes the question of whether he again failed to fulfill an obligation to produce information.
The Clinton Tapes is fascinating for its context. Branch knew Bill Clinton when they worked together on George McGovern's 1972 campaign before going their separate ways. Clinton pursued elective office; Branch earned a Pulitzer Prize. They reunited in the days before the president's inauguration, when Clinton sought Branch's advice on how best to preserve a record of his impending presidency.
A new chapter in their relationship thus ensued wherein Branch would travel, mostly on short notice, from his home in Baltimore to the White House. There he would set up two tape recorders in the residential quarter and interview President Clinton on all aspects of his presidency. Branch would then surrender the tapes to the president, who would store them in his sock drawer. The author, meanwhile, would record his own observations while en route home to Baltimore. This went on for 79 occasions covering the duration of both Clinton terms. Branch's tapes are the source of his new book—Clinton maintained possession of the tapes they produced together and Branch did not hear them.
In The Clinton Tapes, we find Bill Clinton—sometimes eating dinner, doing a crossword puzzle, watching a ballgame, helping Chelsea with homework, responding to Hillary, and fielding calls from Congress—all while answering Branch's questions about every issue of importance.
Those issues included the controversy over the White House travel office, Vince Foster's death, Whitewater, Paula Jones, and Monica Lewinsky. Each of those matters was investigated. Subpoenas were a staple of the Clinton years.
Sporadically in The Clinton Tapes, Branch addresses the conundrum posed by recording the sitting president and the need to avoid certain subjects because of investigations. Still, their conversation continued, and one suspects that the likes of Ken Starr would have salivated upon knowledge of their occurrence.
Typical is the passage on page 143:
"'By the way,' said [Lloyd] Cutler, 'are you the president's diarist?' His question struck me dumb. He was nodding already, as though I need not bother to lie. Cutler said the Whitewater special prosecutor had subpoenaed a broad range of materials on specified topics, and he had a professional duty to seek disclosure of all responsive items in the president's knowledge or possession. This plunged me into nightmares of imminent exposure and ruin for the project. The president and I did talk from time to time, I replied evasively. Cutler should direct his specific question to Clinton himself, I said, but it would be a great loss to history if legal threats precluded any compilation of presidential notes."
And this, from page 156:
"Then he [Clinton] said [David] Kendall had found out somehow about our history tapes—probably from Lloyd Cutler—and would be calling me about the special prosecutor's subpoena. Did my notes indicate which tapes had 'substantive' remarks about Whitewater or the death of Vince Foster? He said Kendall may insist on listening to some of them. We sagged into a dozen ominous questions. If leaks from a legal submission revealed the existence of his diary, Clinton feared that Congress would demand all the tapes."
On page 172:
"Only a few nights earlier, Clinton explained, he had taken David Kendall down to the Lincoln Bedroom so the lawyer could listen to selected tapes. Kendall worked there alone, making his own little transcripts, which he was incorporating into Clinton's response to the subpoena from Special Prosecutor Fiske. The exposure would be nerve-racking, but we agree that Kendall's punctilious compliance was wise. Without it, the tapes would become legally tainted. He would never have been able to open them for historical research without inviting charges that he should have surrendered the Whitewater comments under subpoena. Evasion or suppression would defeat our whole purpose. Instead we had to take our chances with disclosure."
And, on page 511: "Gingerly I asked if he [Clinton] wanted to discuss Lewinsky on tape. He said yes."
• Ted Widmer on Taylor Branch's book• The Daily Beast speed reads The Clinton TapesThe reader of The Clinton Tapes is left believing that the tapes themselves were never produced, something Branch himself believes.
"I'm virtually certain that they were not. I don't know, but what I'm saying is that David Kendall answered some subpoenas for material in the president's possession and he listened to the tapes and I'm sure responded," he told me when we spoke last week.
"But my guess is that he did it in a way that he didn't tip off that these were from this larger enterprise, didn't say this is from a tape recording, that he did it in a way that didn't telegraph where it came from and maybe concealed it with a lot of other information, things that Clinton told him or whatever, so that the special counsel's office never filed a subpoena saying, 'Is there a tape project there involving Taylor Branch talking? Give us all the tapes, we want to listen.' That was our dread."
Having promulgated more than my fair share of subpoenas while in private practice, I find it hard to believe that no inquiry from an outside lawyer to President Clinton triggered a requirement to reveal the tapes. Subpoenas cast a very wide net for information that might be relevant to an investigation. And if their existence had been revealed, common sense dictates that there would have been a very public legal battle regarding their production.
Ken Starr won't speak on the subject, at least not to me. His office said he was finished speaking about Clinton investigations. When I reached Robert Fiske, special prosecutor before Starr was appointed, he said he'd have to go back to his files before determining if the tapes should have been produced. David Kendall didn't respond to my requests for comment.
But a source of mine—nobody named here—with knowledge of several aspects of the Starr investigation confirmed that the tapes were never provided, nor did investigators know of their existence.
Joseph diGenova, himself a former independent counsel and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, told me the tapes contain "precisely the types of pieces of information that would be covered ordinarily by the language of a subpoena." Moreover, they weren't covered by attorney-client privilege, since Branch is a journalist. Nor could Branch claim any reportorial privilege since he was never asked about them. DiGenova also notes that the president—not Branch—was in possession of the tapes.
"One of the first things I thought of was, who had these tapes and were they ever produced to any of the investigations?" diGenova told me. "And I can only conclude at this point that they were not, because there appears to be no record of them in any of the investigations that I'm aware of."
There is no way for an outside observer to know whether President Clinton was required to produce information that instead stayed in his sock drawer, but my legal instincts tell me that any number of attorneys who investigated the former president are requesting old files from storage to see how they worded their subpoenas.
Plus: Check out Book Beast, for more news on hot titles and authors and excerpts from the latest books.
Michael Smerconish is a nationally syndicated radio host. His latest book, Instinct: The Man Who Stopped the 20th Hijacker, was published last month.


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The list of potential MVP candidates contains a handful of names. Matt Ryan. Peyton Manning. Aaron Rodgers. J.J. Watt. Some are suggesting that Andrew Luck could get some votes.
But what about the guy who has as many Super Bowl rings than those five players combined?
The Steelers are making a push for quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to get MVP consideration, according to Ed Bouchette of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
"He should be a candidate," backup quarterback Byron Leftwich told Bouchette. "The fact he was not listed [as one of five candidates by ESPN] is ridiculous. He's one of the elite; '7' can play the game of football, and he's playing at a very high level."
"He's a big-time leader, a big-time competitor, a fourth-quarter killer," Mike Wallace said. "He's the toughest quarterback in the league. . . . He picked up the new offense really fast. I feel it's time he gets the recognition he deserves."
The other side of the ball agrees.
"He's a big reason why we've been in games and why we feel we can win any game," defensive end Brett Keisel said. "That's why we feel we can go to the Super Bowl every year, because we have a championship-type quarterback."
Leftwich thinks that Roethlisberger's somewhat unconventional style is hurting him when it comes to getting praise.
"He's a very unique football player, and I think sometimes by him being unique and the style he plays, he doesn't get enough credit for all the things he does right," Leftwich said. "He doesn't play the way people perceive the quarterback position to play."
"Sometimes he doesn't get mentioned with the elite quarterbacks for one reason or another," Keisel said. "We in this locker room consider him the best."
It's unclear why Roethlisberger isn't getting more notice or consideration for the league's top individual award. Past accounts of boorish behavior -- and allegations of criminal misconduct -- have made it hard for him to enjoy a great reputation among fans and the media. The "drama queen" perception doesn't help, either.
But Keisel and Leftwich and Wallace are right. The guy can play. And he's playing as well as ever. When it's time for the votes to be cast, here's hoping folks set aside factors unrelated to his performance this season.
[polldaddy poll=6681802]


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Understanding how the fretboard work horizontally was quite a revelation. It forced me to get away from position-based playing and actually think about the intervals between notes.
Chops: Intermediate Theory: Beginner Lesson Overview: • Play through each major scale in sixths. • Create licks that combine doublestops with open string pull offs. • Develop a deeper understanding of how to view the fretboard horizontally. |
Print it! Click here to download a high-resolution, printable PDF of the notation. |
Understanding how the fretboard work horizontally was quite a revelation. It forced me to get away from position-based playing and actually think about the intervals between notes. Moving a lick or a new technique diatonically up and down the neck pushed me to a point where I wasn't just reciting licks. Having said that, I do love licks.
In Fig. 1 will be working with the interval of a sixth. We will start in the key of A with the root on the 1st string and the third on the 3rd string. Once you can recognize the pattern moving up and down the neck, transpose this to the other eleven keys.
or download audio file
We will incorporate some country guitar concepts in Fig. 2. Here, we will approach the lower note chromatically from a whole step below. To get the chicken picking sound, you'll need to palm mute the first three notes and pluck the high note of the interval with the middle finger.
or download audio file
At first glance, Fig. 3 looks very similar to the previous example. In this lick, instead of approach the lower note chromatically, we add a lower neighbor tone to keep the symmetrical movement going.
or download audio file
Let's take what we have so far and add some pull offs. In Fig. 4 you can see a triplet-based lick where we incorporate pull offs with each note on the 1st string. Make sure to pay attention to what key you are in. The note of the open string must be diatonic to the key.
or download audio file
We put everything together in Fig. 5. This example combines the open-string pull offs with moving up and down the neck in sixths. Start things slow and listen to the audio example to really hear how these examples work in context.
or download audio file
The goal with this approach is to think long term. When you work through these examples you will get a better understanding of the fretboard and have more freedom when you improvise. Take some time to freely improvise with these as well. You can get a lot of mileage out of these if you just check under the hood and see what's possible.
Jason Loughlin has performed with Amos Lee, Rachael Yamagata, James Burton, Mike Viola, Nellie Mckay, Phil Roy, Marshall Crenshaw, Sara Bareillies, Lesley Gore, Ben Arnold and John Francis to name a few. Jason lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn performing and teaching. Look out for his new record, Peach Crate, due out in February. For other info be sure to check his website jasonloughlin.com


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How much is a human life worth? The Chinese authorities appear to have valued it at 70,600 yuan (£7,160). That is the amount they have agreed to pay to the family of Feng Jianmei, a woman forced to undergo a late-term abortion because she could not afford the fine for breaking China's strict one-child policy.
The case, which I blogged about last month, caused outrage worldwide after a photograph of Feng with the dead seven month old foetus was distributed online.
The family – who suffered harassment and were labelled "traitors" for talking to foreign media – had planned to take legal action but have decided not to after the government announced the payout. Feng's husband, Deng Jiyuan, told the Associated Press that his family wanted to return to normality.
While forced abortions are technically illegal in China, they are not unusual, given that the 300,000 officials employed to enforce the one-child policy receive financial incentives to meet quotas of abortions and sterilisations.
The sheer violence of what happened to Feng – who was hooded, bundled into a car and given an injection that induced a stillbirth – is difficult to comprehend. The emotive power of this incident has segued into a wider debate about the one-child policy, with prominent researchers both outside and within China urging authorities to ease the restrictions.
Chinese government researchers argued that the policy must be relaxed because of the drastically ageing population and an impending labour shortage. A group of Chinese scholars also signed a letter calling for a change to the law, reiterating the risk to economic sustainability – with the imminent crisis of a shortage of young workers – but also the human rights issue. James Liang, one of the signatories, said: "From an economic perspective, the one-child policy is irrational. From a human-rights perspective, it's even less rational."
So what are the chances of a change? If past example is anything to go by, they are slim – calls for a relaxation of the rules are nothing new. The regime still believes that there are too many people (an impression borne out by overcrowded urban centres) and besides, is risk-averse. The sheer size of China makes any central change slow.
While officials debate the economic and rational arguments for and against the one-child policy, women and families will continue to suffer. Last month, a former official with China's National Population and Family Planning Commission made an astonishing tearful apology on television in Hong Kong. In an interview with Pheonix TV, Zhang Erli said: "I felt sorry for our Chinese women. I feel guilty. Chinese women have made huge sacrifices. A responsible government should repay them."
But "repayment" goes little way towards tackling the trauma of a forced abortion, or the invasiveness of vaginal checks and random pregnancy tests which are commonplace in some areas. Zhang Kai, a lawyer advising Feng and her family, dismissed the pay off: "70,000 for a person's life? It is too little."
The best repayment would be to end this policy, which is being used as a brutal tool against women and their rights over their own bodies.


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John Edwards Gets Dry Feet
Note to GQ's editor: It's OK to clash!
First rule of Today's GQ Man: Be a wuss! Josh Green is an excellent magazine writer, so his piece on Hillary infighting is unlikely to have been killed by GQ magazine because it was bad. That leaves Politico reporter Ben Smith's explanation--that it was spiked by GQ's editor Jim Nelson because of pressure from the Clinton camp, in the form of denial of access to Bill Clinton for an upcoming GQ cover story. ... Maybe Nelson will have something more to say that will make him look better than he looks now. But there's one way to find out how good the piece was. Publish it--somewhere. That's what the Web is for, no? ... Note to Josh: I'll do it if no one else will. ... Or is GQ not only spiking the piece but refusing to let Green place it elsewhere? That would be full-service journalism for the Clintons. ... Obvious Questions: Could the piece have been as bad for the Clinton camp as the publicity they're now getting? Are they still not quite operating in the internet age? ... Doesn't Bill Clinton want to be on the cover of GQ a month before the Iowa caucuses? You'd think Nelson would have some leverage of his own. ... 4:04 P.M.
Inside Toobin's Secret Kitchen, Part III: It's OK for Jeffrey Toobin to characterize Justice Clarence Thomas as "lonely," and "ideologically isolated, strategically marginal." But when Thomas describes himself as those things, it's time for a New Yorker-pleasing sneer! Patterico prosecutes. ... P.S.: Ann Althouse has more fun with Toobin's flimsy dramatization techniques here. ... [via Beldar] 12:48 P.M.
Kossacks Reach Out! On BlogTalk Radio, David (thereisnospoon) Atkins, Adam (Clammyc)Lambert and I talk about the Surge (I'm tentatively for it, they're not) and Atkins' interesting distinction between "moderates" and "centrists" (I'm for both, they aren't). ... The whole conversation reinforced my sense that what Kossacks mean by "progressive" is largely untethered from what pre-1992 Democrats meant by "liberal," but maybe you'll disagree. ... P.S.: Podcast available here. ... 12:20 A.M.
John Edwards Will End Illegal Immigration! I thought it was standard (if effective) political hyperbole when Sen. Sessions characterized "comprehensive" immigration reform as "No Illegal Alien Left Behind." But here's John Edwards describing his immigration plan at what appears to have been a Democratic SEIU panderthon [E.A.]:
"We're going to ensure that every single person living in the United States of America has a completely achievable path to American citizenship so that they don't live in the shadows."
It won't be hard for Hillary to stay to the right of that. ... P.S.: Note that to bring everyone out of "the shadows," it's not enough that there be a path to legalization for everyone--everyone must also be legal while they are following this path (or else they're still in the shadows). In other words, if Edwards' position isn't instant legalization for all who've managed to sneak into the territorial U.S., I don't understand why it isn't. ... P.P.S.: Maybe it's not quite a universal "dry foot" policy--you have to be "living" here, not just physically on this side of the border. But it's close. ... 11:42 P.M.
Fred or Freddoso? You CANNOT have both! Fred Thompson appears to have, perhaps accidentally, hit on what seems to me the correct view of campaign finance reform, which is that you can regulate money donated directly to parties and candidates but you can't stop people from making independent expenditures if they arre outside of candidate or party control. The Corner's David Freddoso asserts with rather desperate force that
You CANNOT limit soft money without placing those restrictions on [independent] free speech.
Oh yeah? Why not? I can see how the authors of McCain Feingold wanted to restrict both forms of speech, but that doesn't mean others won't want to draw the distinction. Money spent independently is likely to be spent inefficiently, even at cross purposes with the official party. Ask MoveOn.org! It's therefore a less reliable means of bribery than a direct contribution. ... In any case, this is not a distinction you "CANNOT" make--which means you don't have to either keep all of McCain-Feingold or rip it all down. The Constitution is not a Hsu-icide pact! ... 1:05 A.M.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Inside the Secret World of Jeff Toobin, Chapter II: Ann Althouse catches Toobin telling the same pathetic anecdote at two different points in his book--except that the words between quote marks, and attributed to Justice O'Connor, are different each time. Althouse's conclusion: "I think it's fair to suspect that Toobin assembles material into quotes that are not really quotes." ... 9:23 P.M.
Burkle Watch: 1) Burkle My Hsu! He's named in Hsu-related suit as someone who "introduced and/or endorsed Hsu as a friend, colleague and trusted associate." Of course this is just an allegation. Tobey Maguire is also named. [via Instapundit] ... 2) TabQuest '08 Fallout? He's sued by former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan, accused of not letting Riordan and other investors sell their stakes in a venture in order to "perpetuate the myth that he is a billionaire, `legendary investor,' and to profit from millions of dollars in consulting, acquisition, and management services agreements and fees." He immediately settles, self-effacingly telling the L.A. Daily News**
"It doesn't do anything for me to have a couple million dollars of Dick Riordan's money."
Unexplored angle: Didn't the Riordan/Burkle investment involve Source Interlink, the media distribution outfit that's been talked about as a possible vehicle for Hillary-backer Burkle to purchase and effectively gain control of the tabloids (National Enquirer, etc) owned by American Media Inc. in advance of the 2008 election? I think it did! That raises various possible political subtexts, since last time I checked Riordan was nominally a Republican.
Of course, from Burkle's point of view, just negotiating to purchase the tabs might have the effect of neutralizing them, since aptly named AMI tab kingpin David Pecker doesn't seem like the type of guy to print a story that embarrasses someone who might be the salvation of his troubled company.
**--Not the sort of quote you'd read in the competing L.A. Times. Too juicy. ... 11:58 A.M. link
Toobin Career Update: Is another embarrassing string of corrections in store for a Jeffrey Toobin book? UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh has already noticed a number of non-trivial errors in Toobin's latest, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court --including two small examples of classic Toobin slipperiness: 1) Suggesting-without-saying that Justice O'Connor, leading the court to the left, voted on the "liberal" majority of a major federalism case when in fact she voted on the opposite side, in the minority; 2) A casual bit of New Yorker-reader-pleasing innuendo against Justice Thomas:
On p. 111, the book describes how Thomas received a $1.5 million book advance for his memoirs from Rupert Murdoch, and adds in a parenthetical, "More than three years after the contract was announced, and $500,000 paid to him, Thomas had still not delivered a manuscript." If that's just faulting Justice Thomas for being a slow writer, that's fine, though I expect that three years isn't that long a time for writing a manuscript. But if the claim is that he's somehow taking money and delivering only vaporware — which I think is the impression the parenthetical leave — might it have been worth mentioning that the book is coming out just a few weeks after The Nine? The author might not have known this when he was writing the manuscript, but I'd think it could have been checked before The Nine went to press.
Volokh is very hesitant and mild-mannered about his list of errors--but as he notes, it doesn't cover the parts of the book he "didn't know as much about, and thus couldn't fact-check" himself. ... 2:31 A.M. link
Friday, September 21, 2007
Update on the Make-It-Across-the-Border-and-Your-Kids-Get-Green-Cards-Act ... sorry, the "DREAM Act": It appears to be headed for a vote next week. ... Mark Krikorian has more. ... To reiterate: The problem with this bill is not just that it's apparently been drafted as a stealth mechanism to allow lots of illegal immigrants to claim they qualify and thereby achieve legal status, although it has. Even were it restricted to its core purpose--compassionate treatment for eager students brought into the country by their parents when they were young--it would inherently create an incentive for further illegal border crossing (namely by telling potential illegals to bring their kids across the border when they are young). ... Now that the government is finally (seemingly, at least temporarily) trying to remove the "jobs magnet" for continuing illegal immigration, this is not the time to activate an alternative "kids magnet." ... Once the borders are reasonably impervious, then all sorts of compassionate semi-amnesties become much more feasible. But a vote for the DREAM Act now is in practice a vote for more illegal immigration (as many of its supporters surely understand). ... According to Numbers U.S.A., the Dream Act has only 21 firm opponents in the Senate--and one of them is Lindsey "we're going to tell the bigots to shut up" Graham. When you are relying on Lindsey Graham as one of your "Anti-Amnesty Champions," maybe its time to panic and mobilize the 'yahoos'! ... 1:05 P.M. link
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Late Hits:Here's NPR's Laura Sydell citing Ken Doctor for the proposition that the cancellation of TimesSelect is a "sign that we have reached a tipping point with online advertising" where charging for content loses you more in ad dollars than it gains in subscription revenue. "Sign"? "Reached"? "Tipping Point?" It's been obvious for years that this was the case. Slate learned this lesson in 1999. ... The NYT is attempting to get away with the Pinch-saving spin that the online environment "changed" in a way that "wasn't anticipated" after TimesSelect was launched. But the failure ot TimesSelect was completely anticipated at the time by many bloggers (e.g., Jay Rosen), notes Rachel Sklar. ... Alternative, more sophisticated explanation: Pinch is a fool. ... If he declared he was going to fly and jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would it be a "sign" that mankind had reached a "tipping point" at which individuals were unable to fly? ... P.S.: Was this the same expert analyst Ken Doctor who only a few months ago was rationalizing the paper's TimesSelect strategy with the argument that
"the Times Select play is about more than revenue. It's about holding onto as many of those high-paying print subscribers as long as possible."
Show, Don't Tell: Bob Wright makes a hype-deflating analytic point about that recent liberals-are-smarter-than-conservative study. Bob and I actually demonstrate its falsity later with a bhTV segment that's almost, but not quite, NSFW. Until Bob whips out his moose ... 2:05 P.M.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Inside the Secret World of Jeff Toobin: Ann Althouse has great fun with Toobin's latest book hype. ... For some of the sources of my skepticism regarding Toobin, click here, here and here. ...
FILED UNDER: INGRATIATING, BABYFACED, CAREERISM [We don't have tags yet--ed Just practicing, in case] 4:56 P.M. link
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Slow News Day? Chesty-and-testy Joe Klein says Matt Drudge is a "disgrace" because Drudge used the headline
for a link to a piece on Hillary's health plan. And if you read the AP story in question, it's clear that ... well, it's clear that Hillary is thinking about requiring health insurance for work! She says it could be "part of the job interview--like when your kid goes to school and has to show proof of vaccination." If your kid doesn't show the proof, he can't go to school, right? So what, exactly, is wrong with the headline? Am I missing something? ... P.S.: Sure, Hillary says that "at this point" she hasn't "proposed" anything "punitive" and that it would all have to worked out in negotiations with Congress, etc.. So? Is Drudge required to fall for that strategic fuzzery, or can he go for the nut? It's significant that Hillary's even talking about it at this stage. Anyway, who said Joe Klein is the only one allowed to be hyperbolic? (According to Klein, Drudge is not only a "disgrace" but "shameless.") ... P.P.S.: Is Klein upset because requiring health insurance is his pet plan (and not a bad one)? Or was this just another self-described "moment of stupid weakness"? ... [You just stuck in that last link, to Klein's embarrassing pro-Iraq-War moment, to bait him into responding--ed. Mission Accomplished! ] 11:56 P.M. link
Rupert vs. Pinch. Odds, anyone? A well-informed emailer writes to highlight the non-spreadsheet aspects of recent developments at the very top of the MSM [emphasis added]:
The other piece to remember is that the murdoch-owned WSJ will start a national ad rate war with the wsj offering steep discounts (a la the nyp in nyc). Murdoch wants to bring the NYT to its knees.
Since the NYT is practically on its knees already--at least share-price-wise--this shouldn't be all that difficult. ... P.S.: If you were a member of the Times-owning Sulzberger family, or a top NYT reporter, or Steve Rattner, and you saw the famously rapacious Australian press lord headed your way with murderous intent, and then you saw that your champion was ... Pinch ... well, how terrified would you be? Wouldn't you want a new champion? Just asking! ... 4:55 P.M. link
The L.A. Times manages to lose its best political reporter (and one of the few justifications for its continued existence). ... P.S.: It's surprising and damning that the N.Y. Times didn't hire Brownstein, since-- just between you and me--he's also better than any of their political reporters. ... 4:14 P.M.
Wanted-- The Brentwood EcoZoomBox: Here's a lucrative market niche none of the auto manufacturers seem to have spotted: There is a huge pent-up demand among the West Side L.A. parents I meet for a) a minivan, meaning something like a front-drive SUV but with a Honda-Elementish low floor and ride height; b) big enough to have 7 seats; c)hip enough for a mom to be able to drive it and get admiring glances; d)hybrid, in a way that advertises its hybridness to the world (meaning essentially that it would be available only as a a hybrid). It wouldn't have to get 40 m.p.g. It could get 30 m.p.g.**--as long is it got certifiably better m.p.g. than the non-hybrid equivalent. The point isn't to save the planet so much as to advertise how the planet might be saved--not necessarily a hypocritical posture... Since top mileage would not be a requirement, it could also be e)fast. ... This combination seems eminently do-able, but there's nothing I see on the market now that fills the bill. The Prius meets (c) and (d) but not (a) or (b). The Element and Scion xB meet (a) and (c) but not (b) and (d). The Toyota RAV4 is big enough but not a hybrid. The Mercury Mariner comes in a hybrid, but it doesn't advertise its hybridness the way a Prius does, and it's not big enough. ... P.S.: These moms have money. Tons of it. They don't necessarily want to spend $70,00, but they will readily spend $35,000 or $45,000 or even $50,000 on something that meets their carrying needs, seems sexy and exudes eco-friendliness. ... Suggested names: Subaru Rockingham ... Acura Adderall. ...
Update: Alert reader B.G. suggests this thing. Not bad! A little minivany, though. ...
**--Toyota claims over 40 mpg for the Estima 7-seater, so the 22 m.p.g. I originally had suggested seemed a little low. ... 3:09 P.M. link
Monday, September 17, 2007
*GLOAT ALERT* Pinch's Folly Formally FUBAR! TimesSelect--Pinch Sulzberger's attempt to put his prized columnists behind a subscription wall on the theory that they were so much better than free bloggers that people would pay for them--is finally so doomed it's actually dead, dead, dead, as of midnight tomorrow. ...
You see, it's really a success story! It "met expectations." It's just that online ad growth was so high it was more profitable to not charge readers and thereby sell more ads! I mean, who could have foreseen that (except everyone else in the industry)?...
P.S.: Always trust content from kausfiles. Also, I told you so. [You're running out of enemies--ed Burkle, Bangle--what are they, chopped liver? Anyway, Sulzberger hasn't lost his job, yet.] 3:23 P.M. link
Demi-Semi- Amnesty: Democratic Sen. Durbin's revived "DREAM Act" is typically billed as a way to address "the tragedy of young people"--students who were brought into the country when they were very young, and now want to attend college. I was going to criticize it because it inevitably offers an incentive to future illegal immigration--i.e. "sneak across the border and your already-born children can go to U.S. colleges, pay in-state tuition, and become citizens!" It seemed precisely the sort of compassionate measure that should become possible after the borders had been shown to be secure for several years (as opposed to after a few quick showy raids and deportations).
But it's actually not that bad. It's much, much worse! Kris Kobach persuasively argues that, thanks to loose drafting, it's potentially a huge de facto legalization program of the sort many observers thought had been defeated. For example [emphasis added]:
There is no upper age limit. Any illegal alien can walk into a U.S. Customs and Immigration Services office and declare that he is eligible. For example, a 45 year old can claim that he illegally entered the United States 30 years ago at the age of 15. There is no requirement that the alien prove that he entered the United States at the claimed time by providing particular documents. The DREAM Act's Section 4(a) merely requires him to "demonstrate" that he is eligible—which in practice could mean simply making a sworn statement to that effect.
There's more--e.g., once you file an "application," you can't be deported. ...See also Noam Askew. ... Action Plan: Ask John McCain about the "DREAM Act" on his new "Forget Immigration!" Tour. ... 1:25 A.M. link
Minor Detail Dept: The LAT reports on incarcerated Hillary Clinton fundraiser Norman Hsu's efforts to reward her staff:
Clinton confidant [Patti] Solis Doyle got a coveted, andpricey, designer handbag--a gift that made her so uncomfortable she returned it.
She returned it ... when? ... 1:03 A.M.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
International Relations:TNR's Michael Crowley sees the Hand of Burkle behind the recent endorsements of Hillary Clinton by Wesley Clark and Magic Johnson. Clark, after all, recently got a teaching gig at the Burkle Center for International Relations. ... I didn't know there was a Burkle Center for International Relations. Scary! ... Cocktail Party Question: Will Burkle's help, if any, securing these endorsements make up for the damage done to Hillary's campaign if details of Burkle's zipping around the globe with Bill come out? Just asking! ... New Reuters-style slogan: "Before it's Truth, it's Kausfiles!" .... 11:51 P.M.
I'm on the Slate "Gabfest" being "argumentative" and "petty" despite the best efforts of John Dickerson and HuffPo'sRachel Sklar. ... 10:52 P.M.
"Sally Field Censored":'You ______ me. You really ______ me!' 10:50 P.M.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Thompson's Troubled Start: Fred Thompson's campaign had such a terrible, fumbling, disappointing first week that he's already tied with Giuliani in the ARG poll and ahead by eight points in the Rasmussen poll. ... 8:03 P.M.
Another small car-- Volkswagen Up!I'd call it the Eh! ... But it's rear-engine. 12:40 P.M.
Thanks to readers who've let me know that www.kausfiles.com takes you to a strangely contentless Slate page instead of to the latest kf blog page. I'm trying to get that fixed--as they say at Newsweek, "efforting"!** For the moment, the best way to get here is through the Slate table of contents (www. slate.com). ... 12:35 P.M.
Have a Pinch--Maybe Murdoch Bid on the Wrong Company:New York Times stock falls below $20 a share, down from $50 in 2002. ... Soon even Ron Burkle will be able to buy the place! ... [Tks. to News Alert] 3:33 A.M.
Sen. Clinton courageously speaks out against anti-immigrant attitudes during the recent Univision debate:
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Senator Clinton, the negative tone of the immigration debate has left the country polarized and has created certain racist and discriminatory attitudes toward Hispanics.
SEN. HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: Well, I think this is a very serious problem. And, as I said earlier, there are many in the political, and, frankly, in the broadcast world today, who take a particular aim at our Latino population and I think it's very destructive.
She was maybe referring to politicians who play on voters' visceral disgust at seeing crowds of scruffy day laborers:
"People have to stop employing illegal immigrants. ... I mean, come up to Westchester, go to Suffolk and Nassau counties, stand on the street corners in Brooklyn or the Bronx; you're going to see loads of people waiting to get picked up to go do yard work and construction work and domestic work."
My former downstairs neighbor, Andrea Askowitz, a warm, funny and filthy performance artist, makes her YouTube debut. Instructive! But NSFW. ... 1:57 A.M.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Thanks to a recent election that gave Mayor Villaraigosa's allies a majority on the L.A. school board, a large, poor-performing inner-city high school--Locke High--is being turned over in toto to a charter organization. Why isn't this the equivalent, for the education world, what the dynamiting of the Pruitt-Igoe towers was for New Deal public housing projects? Here is a unionized ghetto high school so beyond salvation by the traditional ed bureaucracy that a majority of its own teachers vote to go charter! ... Needless to say:
Leaders of the teachers union said they would file a grievance to block the transfer on grounds that the decision violates the teachers' labor agreement and state law.
See also this ground-level account. (via LA Observed) 10:18 P.M. link
The Case for Gatekeepers: Why didn't Republican politico Jeff Bell get an interview with the Fred Thompson campaign? He only wanted to help! Was it maybe because Thompson has distinguished himself from the field by strongly opposing Bush's misguided illegal-immigrant semi-amnesty proposal, while Bell a) supported it; b) worked for La Raza, which helped draft it and c) erroneously (and self-servingly) declared to pro-legalization pundit Fred Barnes that the political tide had turned Bush's way? ... Or was it maybe because Jeff Bell's the kind of guy who, when he doesn't get a job interview, will whine to Robert Novak and get you bad press? ... P.S.: I am vaguely troubled to learn from Novak that Mary Matalin is playing a significant role in Thompson's campaign. Too Beltway! ... Matalin's charming, but as a friend said of her and her husband, "She's famous because she's the woman who ran the worst campaign in presidential history,** and he's famous because he's the guy who beat the worst campaign in presidential history." ...
Update: Matalin was also in the "political inner circle" of Sen. George Allen's 2006 reelection campaign, which will be studied for decades. You remember Sen. Allen, don't you? ....
**--Bush, 1992. 4:50 P.M. link
Not Bully: Is it really a good idea, from President Bush's point of view, for him to give a prime time address today about Iraq? Seems like Bush speeches haven't convinced anybody of anything for several years now--especially about Iraq, but also about Social Security reform and immigration reform. The president's rhetorical campaigns not only didn't win those fights--it seemed as if they didn't even move the needle in his direction. Another big-deal Bush Iraq address, given the President's unpopularity on the issue, might actually hurt. Why not just read a statement on the White House lawn endorsing Gen. Petraeus' plan and be done with it? .... Backfill: Turns out Charles Krauthammer and the rest of Brit Hume's panelists made basically the same point at length today. Why give the Dems an opportunity to argue against Bush as opposed to Petraeus? This is a pretty basic mistake by the White House, no? I thought new communications czar Ed Gillespie was "winning rave reviews for handling critical PR issues." If he's so smart ... P.S.: Or is Bush too legacy obsessed--or just plain vain--to cede the lead role to Petraeus? .... 2:19 A.M. link
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
One way to think about the surge: Juan Cole writes that
the best hope for the Dems may be that Gen. Petraeus actually succeeds, over the next year, in significantly reducing ethnic tensions.
Otherwise, Cole argues, "when the Democratic president pulls US troops out in summer of 2009, all hell is going to break loose." To which James Taranto understandably replies, in effect, 'why pull out, then?" .... I assume Cole's answer is that a pull-out might be desirable as the best (least bad) policy solution, but would still be a political disaster for a Democratic president. Fair enough. But strictly on policy terms, doesn't the desirability of a pullout depend on whether the hell that is going to break loose when we leave is becoming a bigger hell or a smaller hell because of our continued military presence? Right now, despite the disputes over pre- and post-surge death counts, etc., it looks like it's becoming a smaller hell, no? ... P.S.: Cole also has some interesting things to say about the bombing of those Yazidi villages. ... [via Insta] 11:22 P.M. link
TimesSelect, Still Gaining Strength! Literally hundreds of new paying subscribers last month! 1,700 to be exact. Gawker's Choire Sicha calculates the full immensity of this new revenue stream, which appears to be enough to cover several minutes of Thomas Friedman's expense acount. .... 5:55 P.M.
Reader P.D. makes an interesting prediction about another consequence of the immigration crackdown in California:
Besides cheap labor, illegals increase demand for homes, drive up prices, and bestow an average of a 10% per year increase into the property tax coffers. Compounded, that's...a lot of money. So much easier for Fabian [Nunez, Democratic legislative leader] than convincing the voters to give them a tax increase! Another way that open borders appeals to the right and the left.
I therefore predict a huge tax shortfall, ala [ex.-Gov.] Gray Davis, in about a year. [E.A.]
P.D. could be right! And if she's right she could be right for states other than California as well. ... Kf takes no position. I already have my hands full predicting a tight labor market and rising wages for the unskilled. I'm sticking with that one, despite the recent jobs report. ... 2:21 A.M.
If CBS' hiring of Katie Couric was all about damaging the NBC Today show (rather than boosting the CBS Evening News) it's working. Today "has lost about 360,000 viewers" in the past year, including 12% of women aged 25-54. ... 2:07 A.M.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
UnBangled: A Russian garage takes parts from a 1970s Volga sedan and sticks them on a new BMW M6. It's arguably an improvement. ... 3:15 P.M.
NEA vs. La Raza--In Iowa, for a Dem, it's not even close: The undisputed Pander King of the Democratic campaign, Bill Richardson, lunges for the caucus-dominating Iowa teacher vote by saying he'd "scrap" No Child Left Behind, before directly quoting the National Education Association's vapid slogan.
We must provide our public schools with what the National Education Association refers to as the three R's — Responsibility, Respect and Resources.
In the New Economy it's always good to cut out the middleman. ...P.S.: I didn't realize No Child Left Behind had been endorsed by La Raza. ... 1:40 A.M.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Gran Salida: Why do I pay attention to anecdotal evidence? Because academics are always the last to find out what's happening. If you wait until a social trend turns up in some professor's peer-reviewed charts,** you are waiting too long. (Example: Anecdotal evidence always said people spent a long time on welfare. Academics said they didn't. Until, after a decade or two, the academics looked at their printouts more carefully.) With that in mind, here's a report from, yes, the front lines of the illegal immigration crackdown (scroll down to comment from "hllnwlz"):
I'm a high school English teacher in OC. Some very interesting things are afoot in Anaheim public schools.
The AP in charge of scheduling says our freshmen enrollment is down 100 kids, about 5% off normal. We've been reading about decreasing enrollment coming through the elementary schools, but didn't expect it to hit us so quickly.
In five classes, I SHOULD have 100-110 kids.
I have 71. Any of you familiar with OC public schools knows how low that number is.
Also, I've got many, many more white and asian students than ever before. I *think* what's happening is that many of those families have downsized into our lower-middle class neighborhood.
On top of that, the recently immigrated Mexican kids seem to have *poof* vanished. (Note: I have no knowledge of their status, illegal or legal.) ALL my students, for the first time in my career, have insisted that I eschew their given names and use an anglicized version (e.g. Mary for Maricruz, Judy for Yuridia, Tommy for Tomas, etc.) instead. No one is speaking Spanish inside or outside the classroom.
This leads me to believe either (a) all the enforcement ICE has been doing is scaring the crap out of the (legal and illegal) immigrant community and/or b) people are ditching Cali for greener pastures.
My money's on b. [Emphasis added.]
But they're ditching East Tulsa too. Maybe they're ditching the U.S. entirely. Even if they are only moving around internally, this could be a large and portentous demographic shift. In a decade someone will get tenure for discovering it. ... P.S.: Note that "hllnwlz"'s comment is from a blog tracking the puncturing of the housing bubble. Sugggestive! ... [Tks. to emailer "**"]
Update: In metro Atlanta's Gwinnett County, where immigration has been a hot topic, they may have to lay off teachers because 3,500 expected students didn't show up. ... That's three, so it's a trend! ...
**--Or even, like Matt Yglesias, wait until a trend shows up in Jared Bernstein's review of BLS data ... 11:45 P.M. link
Let Mirthala Decide! Telemundo anchor Mirthala Salinas' former boyfriend, California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, is trying to please the powerful state teachers' unions by passing a bill that would let local school boards kill charter schools after three years.** Telemundo anchor Mirthala Salinas' current boyfriend, formerly married L.A. Mayor Antonia Villaraigosa, has been a supporter of L.A.'s Greeh Dot charter schools, which the local school board has viewed as a threat. Since Villaraigosa seems to be on the right side of this one, I say we let Mirthala decide. ...
**--About 50% of California's legislative politics seems to involve Democratic officeholders trying to please public sector unions. That's the game here, much more than on the national level. 11:16 P.M.
Non-fence not working: Is the Bush administration about to ditch the "virtual fence" along the border? Seems like the yahoos were right again. ...10:57 A.M.
"Federalism" vs. "Partition": Max Boot argues that what he calls "federalism" is a better solution for Iraq than "partition." Indeed, he argues that what advocates of "partition"--most recently, Charles Krauthammer--call "partition" really is "federalism."
Question: Is America "partitioned" into 50 states? By the loose definition of "soft partition" that some (like Krauthammer) use, you could say yes. After all, the federal government doesn't provide most basic services, from welfare to policing to education; at most it supplements locally provided services (e.g., the FBI backs up or supplants local law enforcement in a few instances) and provides funding (e.g., "block grants") to pay for locally provided services. While you could describe this arrangement as a "soft partition," the more commonly accepted term is "federalism," and it is a good description of what is happening in Iraq.
Huh? Last time I checked, North Dakota wasn't populated by people who'd been chased out of South Dakota by terrorizing militias, and residents of all 50 states were free to travel in all the other states without fear of being expelled (if they're lucky) or shot in the back of the head because of their state identity. Given Iraq's murderous sectarian tensions, Boot's invocation of the benign "50 state" model suggests he and other "federalism" advocates haven't yet come to grips with the reality in Iraq. But, in any case, Krauthammer is talking about sectarian separatism, not mere Dakota-style line-drawing and devolution. ... Bizarrely, Bruce Kesler seems to agree with Boot. ... P.S.: For Boot's more serious arguments against "partition," see this Commentary article. a) Note that his claim that "most Iraqis do not support partition," based on an April poll, is challenged by commenters on his blog post. Indeed, according to the poll, support for a "unitary" Iraqi government has been falling steadily since 2004 while support for a soft or hard partition has risen. (Update: See also this analyst, who is surprised by the high pro-partition sentiment in Sadr City.) ... b) I also think Boot is guilty of reification--declaring that if a stable partition was established in Bosnia only because of a continuing "NATO troop presence and a quasi-colonial structure of international governance argument" that it can only be established in Iraq with a continuing, large foreign troop presence, etc.. Sometimes things happen for which there is no precedent. (And commentators who don't believe that had no business supporting the invasion of Iraq.) ... 1:14 A.M. link
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Jeez, did you notice how well-positioned Richardson is in Iowa? They could easily go for him in the final week. They are proven fools, remember. ... 1:31 A.M..
This is becoming a moving story of the resilience of the human spirit! Huntington, New York's Greg Packer, uncovered by Ann Coulter as "apparently the entire media's designated man on the street for all stories ever written," gets banned from the Associated Press in 2003. Hard times ensue. Packer is reduced to representing randomly chosen Americans in publications like the Norwood News. But--you know how this ends. A lone determined individual versus giant faceless, repressive media bureaucracy. They picked on the wrong Everyman! Greg Packer will not be not quoted. Especially by the Associated Press. Patterico has the whole emotional saga. ... Update: Packer mourns Brooke Astor for us all. The man cannot be stopped. [Tks. emailer LPM]... 1:25 A.M
Friday, September 7, 2007
"Snore-y and Stinky": Michelle Obama maybe doesn't need to worry so much anymore that her husband will become a god-like figure requiring her unique humanizing skills. He's losing by 15 pointsin the Democratic party to someone who voted for the war and hasn't apologized. ... P.S.: Why's Mrs. Obama so angry again? People will speculate. ... 4:58 P.M.
Osama Bin-Laden on "real estate mortgages; global warming and its woes." He's ready for the Iowa caucuses. But where does he stand on Davis-Bacon? ... 2:14 P.M.
Ann Coulter on Sen. Craig's non-hypocrisy:
Craig not only opposes gay marriage, he's in a heterosexual marriage with kids. Talk about walking the walk!
Good point. He's not just a non-hypocritical on the gay marriage front, but almost heroically non-hypocritical. Even Bob Wright agrees .. well, sort of. ... 1:41 P.M.
Back in April, Eli Lake argued that Gen. Petraeus could be relied on for an honest report on the surge--he's become so prominent, and the war so unpopular, that if he decided the surge had failed a) Bush couldn't fire him and continue the strategy and b) Petraeus would become a hero to the anti-war half of the country with a bright political future. ... I don't think it's quite that simple--Petraeus would have to admit that it was his strategy that was failing. But it's worth keeping in mind. Careerism doesn't necessarily conflict with honesty in this case, because Petraeus doesn't necessarily need to please Bush or his superiors to continue his career.. ... 1:18 P.M.
The B-List is the A-List: One of Fred Thompson's virtues is that he's not that big a star, argues Bill Bradley--and not a movie star:
He's not really a movie star, more a movie presence, but he is definitely a TV star. Of course a really big movie star in a political campaign can be overwhelming. Fred Thompson is a strong presence in Red October. Sean Connery is a blow-the-doors off presence. I can't imagine someone like Connery running for public office. Even Arnold [Schwarzenegger] with his years of selling restaurants and fitness and all that was still way too hot at times early on, especially when he did his shakedown cruise for a future run in 2002, with his Proposition 49 after-school programs initiative.
Telling a conservative magazine writer that he has "a shitty body," as Schwarzenegger did in that campaign, is generally not a good idea for an aspiring big-time politician. But that was Arnold. Really big movie stars have an air of danger about them, of mystery, be it physical, sexual, psychological. They're compelling up on the big screen. But a regular diet can be too much.
Ronald Reagan was fortunate in that he was not a big movie star. There was nothing scary about his cinematic persona.
1:11 P.M. link
Steve Smith persuasively refutes Richard Blair's argument that the 2005 bankruptcy reform sparked the subprime mortgage crunch by denying debtors a chance to avoid foreclosure. (It turns out the new law doesn't offer fewer anti-foreclosure protections than the old law.) But Smith doesn't address Megan McArdle's scenario, in which the 2005 reform fueled the housing bubble by a) shrinking the credit card market by making it more dangerous and less desirable to run up credit card debt, and b) sending more money into the mortgage lending market precisely because mortgage debtors' remedies were unchanged (and therefore they were still willing to borrow against their homes). ... P.S.: I still suspect that the failure of immigration reform had something to do with the credit crunch--not because it was illegal immigrants defaulting on those mortgages, but because with lower prospective immigration the long-term value of all housing fell, making everyone's collateral worth less and lenders more reluctant to provide money secured by that collateral. How's that wrong?... 12:01 A.M.. link
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Some days you feel like Tony Perkins in Winter Kills: Well-connected, life-sapping state and local news editor Janet Clayton out at LAT. ... Post post ergo propter post. ... 7:32 P.M.
Now they come with the news judgment ... : L.A. Times "Styles & Scenes" reporter Elizabeth Snead attended the glamorous Slate V launch party last night, but for some reason decided to write about a naked "High School Musical" actress instead. ... 7:14 P.M.
Ron Burkle makes a brief-but-resonant appearance in Matt Smith's anti-Gavin Newsom comic strip (which would have been better if it had stopped after the first 6 panels). ... 1:52 A.M.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
It looks as if Gov. Schwarzenegger is on the verge of achieving one of his big systemic reforms, an end to gerrymandered legislative districts. Instead, an independent citizens' commission would draw the lines. National precedent potential! According to New West Notes, the state's entrenched Dem legislators are on board (in exchange for a relaxation of term limits). The only person who could stop this badly-needed good-government (and nationally pro-Democratic) plan is ... Nancy Pelosi. She's reported to be "wary of changing anything in the mix that has given her a narrow majority in Congress"--even though, if more Congressional districts were competitive, that would give Pelosi a bigger majority in a Democratic year, which 2008 looks to be. .... 5:11 P.M.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Who's the most worrisome Hillary advisor? Holbrooke? Remember, Ira Magaziner is still lurking around. (He's at the Clinton Foundation.) ... 10:15 P.M.
Fred Thompson's campaign issues a strategy memo noting that in recent surveys
huge percentages of GOP voters indicated they were not satisfied with the current GOP crop. In the Diageo/Hotline poll released just days ago, barely half (54%) of all GOP voters were satisfied with the current crop of GOP candidates with fully 38% not satisfied. This dissatisfaction creates fluidity which creates opportunity for an authentic conservative like Fred Thompson. [E.A.]
Unfortunately for Thompson, he was listed in the Diageo/Hotline poll as one of the crop of GOP candidates GOP voters were presumably dissatisfied with, Ryan Sager notes. ... 9:32 P.M.
PoliPundit has a useful report on state immigration enforcement efforts. Georgia's new car-tag requirement seems to be effective (e.g., illegals "'going back to Mexico'") in a manner that doesn't push my compassion button the way, say, rousting existing veteran employees from their places of work would. Maybe that's because the car tag law denies only new registrations to those who can't produce a valid state drivers' license--affecting the mainly the most transient, least rooted illegals (e.g., those who've just arrived in town and haven't got a car yet). ... 1:10 A.M.
"The "Ethnic Cleansing of Baghdad is Complete": If that headline were accurate (and if I remember right it was originally Newsweek's phrase, not HuffPo's) it wouldn't be such bad news, at least for the U.S.. If the Sunnis really had been cleaned out of Baghdad, that would mean we could leave without having to worry that Sunnis in Baghdad would be slaughtered, right? Unfortunately, the hed's not accurate. The actual Newsweek story reports that the cleansing of Baghdad is still proceeding, with Shiites pushing out Sunnis. "'More than half'" of Baghdad neighborhoods are now "Shiite-dominated," says a Newsweek source. ... Hmm. Does that stat even support the magazine's conclusion that the Shiites have "essentially won"? ... P.S.: What's not clear to me is the degree and pattern of ethnic cleansing that would be needed for the U.S.to leave behind a stable Sunni-Shiite balance of power that wouldn't descend into slaughter. Does the Sunni population of Baghdad have to go down to near 0%? Or would a checkerboard of armed, ethnically homogenous Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods be a stably defensible de facto partition? I hope General Petraeus knows the answers, and is shaping the results of the surge to produce this sort of rough balance of power (as opposed to the loftier goal of mixed neighborhoods where Sunnis and Shiites live in peace and mutual respect, desirable as that would be). ... P.P.S.: 'Balance of power' is why arming the Anbar Sunnis, as we've apparently done, does not seem necessarily a recipe for greater post-drawdown bloodshed. Isn't it possible that if Sunni tribes have enough firepower to deter Shiites, the two sides would reach some sort of detente? ... 12:33 A.M.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Let me get this straight: Owen Wilson tries to kill himself and it's "KATE'S NIGHTMARE"?That's the cover line in US Weekly. The story inside tries pathetically to give the impression that Wilson's despair was somehow linked to the June end of his brief romance with Kate Hudson. He had, US notes, "abruptly cancelled a planned visit to see her" on a set in Australia last year! Instead, he "was spotted partying at the Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills"! That was the beginning of "the actor's downward spiral"! .... Or it was, you know, the behavior of a guy who was about to break up with his girlfriend in Australia. ... Either US Weekly thinks we are fools or Kate Hudson has some very aggressive and tasteless publicity people. Or both. ... P.S.: I still refuse to believe that anybody is that interested in Kate Hudson. She's the new Minnie Driver! 10:50 P.M. link
Pecker Trouble: N.Y. Post's Keith Kelly speculates that, thanks to the bad financial results reported by tabloid-owner American Media (and its aptly-named CEO, David Pecker), "merger talks with billionaire investor Ron Burkle and his Source Interlink Cos. may now be in jeopardy." That seems to assume that Burkle's interest in buying up the tabs is economic. I suspect it's political, and would bet on the merger happening. ... P.S.: Is Burkle foolish enough to think he can bottle up any zippy Bill Clinton stories just by buying the National Enquirer, et. al? If not, would he want to own the tabs because ... well, the best defense is a good offense? ... [Kelly makes it clear Burkle has to get Wall Street to fund much of the deal.--ed. That's just haggling. Hard to believe that he can't make it worth their while.] ... [Emphasis added.] .... 5:28 P.M. link
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Take All the Time You Want, Your Honor: At last, an honest lede:
A federal judge in San Francisco yesterday temporarily barred the Department of Homeland Security from carrying out new rules to crack down on employers of illegal immigrants, dealing a legal setback to the Bush administration's effort to get crops to rot in the fields as part of a Leninist 'worse-is-better' strategy designed to provoke calls from businesses for a semi-amnesty of illegal immigrant workers.
OK, someone at kf may have fiddled with the end bit. But it was in the interests of accuracy! Bush's comprehensivist ally Tamar Jacoby made the crisis-inducing strategy quite explicit in an LAT op-ed recently:
For several years now, tougher border enforcement, plus competition from higher-paying hospitality and construction jobs, have deprived farmers in California and other states of the foreign workers they need to plant and harvest their crops.
The crisis peaks every year in August and September, and the photos start showing up in the newspapers: piles of rotting pears, strawberry plants choked by weeds, unpicked cucumbers grown to monstrous sizes and melons oozing in the fields. ...[snip]
This economic crunch could have a silver lining -- it might grab the public's attention and generate an outcry for better laws. Millions of Americans who think we don't need immigrant workers might wise up. Politicians who opposed immigration reform this year or last might have a change of heart.
Maybe it's not such a bad thing if the ACLU and AFL-CIO lawyers hold up the Homeland Security crackdown for a while (as long as they ultimately lose): 1) That probably delays any labor crisis the Bushies might be able to induce, putting it past the harvest "crunch" and generally shortening the 2008 window during which crisis-provoked employer pressure might revive calls for legalization; 2) It makes it completely clear thatany employer sanctions--even those contained in a comprehensivist "Grand Bargain" of amnesty + enforcement--will be litigated to death by the ACLU et al, which will claim "errors in the Social Security Administration's database" and "discrimination against Hispanic workers." That's exactly why opponents of the Grand Bargain feared the amnesty part would take effect while the enforcement part would get bogged down in the courts just as the administration's crackdown is now getting bogged down in the courts.
A period of no acute worker shortage during which the illegal immigration flow is reduced and the labor market gradually tightens, with anti-comprehensive types instructively battling in the courts and elsewhere to preserve the government's ability to enforce the law against the complaints of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition and other pro-comprehensive groups--that's not a bad posture for opponents of Bush's plan to take into the 2008 election. ... P.S.: It's one reason why I won't be making Polipundit's phone calls. ... 1:50 A.M.
Friday, August 31, 2007
kf is Stupid: Campaign Finance Edition: America Coming Together was a political fizzle--the pro-Dem "527" group that raised $137 million to little apparent effect in the 2004 election. But I don't understand why what ACT did could be prohibited by the federal campaign laws--just as I don't understand why what MoveOn.com did or the SwiftBoat Vets did could be made illegal.
These were all independent expenditures--that is, speech and political activity undertaken outside the control and direction of the actual candidates. I thought the whole (persuasive) premise of the Supreme Court's big 1976 campaign finance ruling in Buckley vs. Valeo was that contributions to candidates could be regulated but that independent expenditures were presumptively protected speech. If I want to spend $5,001 telling voters to vote against Bush--as, in fact, I probably did, if you count in-kind contributions--isn't that what political speech is all about? The same goes for George Soros and Steve Bing (big funders of ACT or its affiliates). And for whoever funded the Swifties to defeat Kerry.
The principled argument here is that people should generally be free to say what they want and engage in whatever political activity they want. The practical hope is that big money that isn't given to a candidate but is spent by outsiders without consulting the candidate is apt to be spent counterproductively--emphasizing themes the candidate would rather not bring up. The Soros-backed Media Fund, for example, didn't run the ads defending Kerry that the Kerry campaign would have wanted it to run. That means that if we let rich meddlers like Soros spend millions they are almost as likely to buy the hostility of the pols they are trying to support as they are to buy those pols loyalty--as long as they don't "coordinate" that spending with the actual, official campaign.
The Federal Election Commission specifically says its investigation "uncovered no evidence of coordination" between ACT and the Kerry campaign." But the F.E.C .negotiated a $775,000 fine with ACT anyway, apparently on the grounds that it was illegal for the group to spend unregulated contributions (in excess of $5,000 per individual) on the "express advocacy" of Bush's defeat. Reaction--even from Instapundit--focused on the fine being "too late and too small" to have any effect at deterring future ACTs. I'd say the controversy is whether ACT should be fined at all.
Luckily the law isn't what the F.E.C. says just because the F.E.C. settles a case and crows about it. This appears to be an open question for the Supreme Court to decide.
P.S.: Would I favor regulating independent expenditures if principle and practice conflicted--i.e., if it could be shown these expenditures were almost always hugely effective at elected the candidates they were trying to elect? Good question. The only way to find out if the question needs to be answered is to let independent expenditures flourish and see what happens, no?So far, it looks as if they are an exceedingly unreliable way for the wealthy to buy political influence--and the Soros/Kerry/ACT/ Media Fund fizzle is Exhibit A for that argument. But if the F.E.C .is allowed to clamp down on independent expenditures** on a case-by-case basis--which is what a federal judge allowed yesterday--we may never find out the for sure.
**--Except by people like me, of course. I'm press! Nyah, nyah. ...
Update: Conservative Byron York of National Review celebrates the F.E.C. fine by republishing his 2005 account of ACT's various shenaningans. But does York believe in campaign finance regulation? If, like most conservative analysts,York thinks it should be OK for the rich to use their money to independently advocate specific candidates, shouldn't he be defending ACT instead of complaining that the fine is "[y]ears too late"? Most of the ACT shenanigans York identifies, after all--attributing lots of money to expenses for "nonfederal" races, for example--are tricks to get around restrictions on federal "express advocacy" that most National Review types don't think should exist in the first place. "[O]penly flouting the rules" isn't so bad when the rules are unconstitutional. ... 3:34 P.M. link


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